In spite of the recognition of the basic role played by medicines in
the protection and maintenance of human health and treatment of human
ailments yet national health policies and plans during the first decade
after independence did not include drug policies or plans for providing
the needs of those health policies and plans with assured efficacy, safety
and quality medicinal products; which have greatly increased in their
numbers and sources and without being subjected to any significantly
effective control.

The decade of the seventies saw an increase in the many drug
problems from which most developing countries suffered; e.g. marketing
of substandard medicines; misleading drug promotion; inaccurate
assessment of drug needs; irrational prescribing, irrational dispensing and
use of medicines; improper pricing practices; insignificant local drug
production; acute shortage in foreign exchange needed to import
medicines and last but not least poor drug regulation and control. Sudan
has suffered from all these problems during that decade...